Angelo Micallef (TMID, 22 December) chose the easy way out of a predicament, namely, to take up my challenge to “reply and deny what I wrote in my letter: When will Dr Lawrence Gonzi stop telling fairy tales about EU funding? (TMID, 25 November). Mr Micallef chose not to take up my challenge. He knows that if he had tried to deny what I wrote in that letter, he would have ended up in a political sand-pit.

Instead, your correspondent took me to task for CNI’s and my predictions. Such as that “we will be swamped by foreign workers”. Aren’t we Mr Micallef? Ask Malta Shipyard workers how many hundreds of “foreign workers” have taken up the jobs of Maltese workers there. Doesn’t he know also that there are around 6,000 foreign workers, mostly from EU countries, working here illegally? What about the thousands of illegal immigrants who have also invaded our country, mainly because Malta is an EU country, and are working here at very cheap rates thus taking up jobs from Maltese workers? Does Mr Micallef also consider thousands of part-time jobs created as “full-time employment”?

Now comes Mr Micallef’s masterpiece, when he asked: “Wasn’t Mr Privitera the man who told us that in the EU we’d be just taking orders from Brussels?” Aren’t we, dear Mr Micallef? Isn’t the government being warned officially, almost weekly, to do what Brussels wants it to do or else…? How come the government has closed the St Luke’s incinerator on the very last day of the EU’s ultimatum, as otherwise the government would have been dragged in front of the EU’s Court of Justice and fined heavily for refusing to obey Brussels’ orders?!

Who will believe Mr Micallef’s claim that the economic growth, still a very insignificant one, is the result of EU membership? It is only the result of the mad rush in construction projects which would probably end up in a property crash, as some foreign property experts are hinting, in the foreseeable future. And also due to the gaming, or gambling, industry, which will have disastrous effects on thousands who can easily be lured to this social “drug”. Malta has been transformed from a “Republic founded on work” to a Republic founded on gambling!

When I wrote what Qui-si-Sana residents told Nationalist MP Arrigo, I was highlighting the fact that those residents said: “We do not trust the government”. They never said that they do not trust the government solely on this issue. Of course, they were referring to a specific issue. But once they do not trust the government on that issue, how can they trust the government on other national issues, such as on the environment? In Maltese we have this saying: Min jigdiblek darba, jigdiblek mitt darba (“One who lies to you once, will lie to you a hundred times!!”)

Mr Micallef suggests that the Malta Labour Party should stop contesting local council elections “irrespective of what the Nationalist Party does”. Mr Micallef is no fool! He would like to see the Nationalist Party not having to face Labour in local council elections after having suffered defeat in the last four rounds of local council elections at the hands of the Malta Labour Party.

As regards my voting for the Malta Labour Party despite my being “a committed Eurosceptic” is due precisely to what I wrote as a heading to my letter of 19 December, “Malta needs a government, not a ‘clique’”!

Eddy Privitera

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